Dishonored - Previews and Other stuff

Due to my limited time, subtlety took a backseat to speed. I found the target and eliminated her with prejudice, then had to run for it. Once outside it took a moment for the confusion to settle and the guards to mobilize. As bullets ripped by, I froze time to escape the grounds. I sprinted to the sewers and slid into a covered escape route, but came out and was facing tallboys, guards walking on mechanized stilts. These guards can quickly ruin your day, so I laid a trap on a nearby bridge, summoned rats to attack another guard, and threw a sticky grenade into a crowd to even the odds. The tallboy then came at me via the bridge and walked right into my trap. As guards closed in, I possessed a fish and swam to my escape route, a waiting boat.

Attempting to teleport into a corridor near my target I fudged my aim, falling slap bang in the middle of a trio of gun toting sentries. What ensued can only be described as an embarrassing kerfuffle of summoned rats, exploding arrows and clashing blades, but what a glorious kerfuffle it was: Dishonored’s melee combat feels weighty, tense and challenging in all the right ways, requiring perfect block timing in order to break your enemy’s swipe, opening an opportunity for an instant kill parry, and granting you with a deeply personal death animation that can only be described as schlocky, crunchy and harrowing in equal measure.

Atomic: The guys who work the crank. What are they called?Seth: That’s a Musical Overseer.Atomic: And they’re the ones that stop the magic abilities?Seth: Yeah. Yeah, the Overseers are… one of the religions in the world of Dishonored in Dunwall is the Abbey of the Everyman, it’s the Overseers. They’re a religious sect and they’re puritan in a way. They hate The Outsider, they hate magic, and they try to do away with that. So some of them are witch hunters and they try to root out that evil wherever they see it, and they have… we’ve developed the religion, there are the seven strictures which is sort of like their Ten Commandments. And so there’s a lot of fiction in the world that supports this. They talk about witches they’ve burned, and they’re always accusing people. So the Musical Overseer, his whole job is to ferret out people with magic. And so that’s why that musical device is something that stops magic… somehow, it uses a mathematical formula to create music that counters The Outsider’s magic. They do things like, they’ll patrol the street and they’ll be cranking their machine and, there’s a book about this in the world, a woman is walking on the other side of the street and she’s just singing to herself, and this guy’s turning the crank and, as they pass, she stops singing. And so they accuse her of witchcraft because clearly her singing was magical, so they burn her. *Laugh*

2. The Scope
This game combines stealth, supernatural abilities, hand to hand combat, guns, crossbows, grenades and even a pulsating heart that guides you to rare loot (no joke, and if it was a joke I don’t think I could think of something quite that ludicrous).
The map is huge and embraces historical aspects of mid-plague London with advanced technology powered by Whale oil.
Rather than holding on to genre cliches and playing it safe; this game takes on everything it’s creators found interesting and then some, making it one of the more inventive and inviting prospects of the coming months.

In the early stages of its development, Dishonored had a stealth mechanic akin to Thief where players could hide in the shadows. However, Arkane decided to scrap it, and lead designer Christophe Carrier explained why.

“But we realised that when you’re standing in front of an NPC like this [hand in front of face] it’s not realistic – we must admit that. In the real world it’s not like this.

WTF, *that* is the reason why they ditched the greatest gameplay ever? Just invent some kind of "shadow magic" and fuck realism.

Originally Posted by Hindukönig
WTF, *that* is the reason why they ditched the greatest gameplay ever? Just invent some kind of "shadow magic" and fuck realism.

Yes, it's a really stupid excuse. The game is not a simulator that is to be taken too seriously anyways, neither is Thief. I am sure most people are quite forgiving to such things and it's not like there's a complete lack of other very unrealistic (non-magical) occurrences in this game..

It can't be that difficult to make the AI able to check how close the Player Character is either, if he's too close he becomes visble. I've played plenty of games where the AI works like that, while not always perfect (AI never is) it's better than nothing.

i see it as something minor, if they succeeded with their plan of giving players a great deal of choices .. that are also WORLD CHANGING. Nothing more satisfying than having that power. FU Skyrim, FU Fallout3, FU Beth

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
but it is not an instant buy for me, it just looks familiar and done before for me.

Wow… that's exactly the opposite of what it looks like to me. Very original in all ways and highly innovative. Not a sequel for starters. It seems like there are ways of combining powers to beat levels that not even the designers know, and that says a lot about the creativity this game will allow.

Originally Posted by Gaxkang
It seems like there are ways of combining powers to beat levels that not even the designers know

That's typical dev talk though, you would hear the exact same thing about Bioshock.. or Thief3 etc. I'm still laughing at Bethesda for hyping the A.I - in Morrowind (!)

SpoonFULL: I'd worry like 5% about who happens to publish a game, the other 95% would be about who actually develops it.. But i agree that Bethesda's previous track record of outside devs isnt spectacular, it doesnt need to mean anything (like an evil curse or something like that ) though.

Originally Posted by vurt
SpoonFULL: I'd worry like 5% about who happens to publish a game, the other 95% would be about who actually develops it.. But i agree that Bethesda's previous track record of outside devs isnt spectacular, it doesnt need to mean anything (like an evil curse or something like that ) though.

Agree, and that is why I am still hopefull for Dishonored (just hope that they are not cursed by the Bethesda touch!).

Originally Posted by borcanu
i see it as something minor, if they succeeded with their plan of giving players a great deal of choices .. that are also WORLD CHANGING. Nothing more satisfying than having that power. FU Skyrim, FU Fallout3, FU Beth

Originally Posted by Gaxkang
It seems like there are ways of combining powers to beat levels that not even the designers know, and that says a lot about the creativity this game will allow.

I have seen that in gameplay videos, but would be there enough challange/reason to need to use or combine these powers - these are the important matters (problem solving and challange) that I would like to know from the reviews. As for creativity, you can get pretty creative on how to kill your targets in Hitman, and the game world is designed to give you this freedom - hence my comment about 'done this before'.

Originally Posted by SpoonFULL
I have seen that in gameplay videos, but would be there enough challange/reason to need to use or combine these powers - these are the important matters (problem solving and challange) that I would like to know from the reviews. As for creativity, you can get pretty creative on how to kill your targets in Hitman, and the game world is designed to give you this freedom - hence my comment about 'done this before'.

Good point, creativity and sandbox gameplay has been done before in Hitman, perhaps they should have gone with a corridor shooter on rails instead.

The downer for me is that playing an assassin is passe. It may be redeemed by the non-lethal approach advertised. But if it's one dimensional, then so much for the variety of gameplay…. I'll wait and read (the reviews).

passe compared to what? considering most games involve killing, i'm not sure if it matters if your an assassin, moster slayer, soldier, mercenary etc. seems sematical. i would think as you say what matters most is gameplay choices and games that allowed for meaningful gameplay strategies, and usually its "assassin" games that offer the most variety as they usually are accompanied by a wide variety of stealth mechanics and also the option for the rambo/psychos to get their fix as well.

personally i will be pissed if i can't play the game non lethal as that is how i plan on playing it. also i hope stephen russell will feature in some voice work in the game, considering that arkane and bethesda have used him recently gives it a good shot.

— —-when we figure out how to build guillotines for corporations the new revolution will have begun—-